Thursday, July 13, 2017

Interview with Winton Higgins and Michelle Morgan

Our guests today are Winton Higgins and Michelle Morgan. Winton is the author of Rule of Law. He is a Sydney writer and senior academic. He
grew up partly in the outback, and partly in Sydney. He is a graduate of the
universities of Sydney, Stockholm and London. After a brief first career in
law, he pursued a much longer one as a social-science academic at Macquarie
University and UTS, publishing rather than perishing as he went. As a creative
writer he won the 2002 NSW Writers’ Centre’s short story competition, and in
2003 published his travel diary, Journey into Darkness. Rule of Law is his
first novel. You can connect with Winton via his website.

Michelle Morgan was a former librarian and is now a full-time writer who lives in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Her first YA novel, Racing the Moon, was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in 2014, and released in the UK and US in 2015. Her latest release, Flying Through the Clouds, was published in April 2017. Four of Michelle's plays have been performed in short play festivals in Sydney, Newcastle and Armidale. You can connect with Michelle via her website, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

What is the inspiration for your current book?

Winton: In my academic ‘day job’ I research about genocide, and
became inspired by reading more deeply into the first Nuremberg trial 1945-6.
Here was an epic drama in which many
aspects of modern life first saw the light of day, right down to simultaneous
interpreting at transnational events. Yet it’s so badly short-changed in the
history books. I felt a great need to bring it back to life using a novelistic
approach.

Michelle: I’d been toying with the idea of having my main character
learn to fly, so I began researching aviators and flying in the 1930s. When I
visited the Gerringong Historical Society’s Museum to see their exhibition on
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s landing and take-off in Southern Cross from Seven
Mile Beach in 1933, I had tingles up and down my spine and could barely talk.
That’s when I decided to develop the story around Joe’s dream of becoming an
aviator. But I also wanted to create sub-plots and flesh out other characters
so readers could relate to the story on many levels.

Is there a particular theme you are exploring in this book?

Winton: The promoters of the trial pursued the ambition to outlaw
aggressive war and human-rights abuses, and to strip even the most
high-and-mighty perpetrators of their impunity. They wanted an international rule
of law, as the title of my novel makes clear. This is its major theme. A
secondary theme concerns what one might call German redemption: the trial set
postwar Germany on a long and ultimately successful process of coming to terms
with its dark past and emerging as today’s ‘good European’.

Michelle: The title - Flying through Clouds - is a metaphor for
adolescence, which is the main theme of the novel. The book also deals sensitively with many themes
and issues, such as: family, friendship, the Depression, resilience, courage,
determination, truth, responsibility, survival, fear, loss, grief, bullying,
violence, gambling, education and work. Many of the issues that teenagers faced
in the 1930s are still relevant today.

Which period of history particularly interests you? Why?

Winton: The 1930s and 1940s, when humanity sank to its lowest
depths, but also rose to its greatest heights. This period set the parameters
of human evil and human decency.

Michelle: The 1930s are a fascinating period in Australia. Not only
did we feel the full impact of the economic hardship of the Depression but we
managed to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge and develop an Aviation industry.
Our aviators, like CKS, Bert Hinkler and Nancy Bird became famous around the
world. Australian cinema, literature and the Arts were thriving. The Australian
Broadcasting Corporation was established and the new wireless technology spread
throughout the country. Don Bradman was a national hero and Bodyline was a
dirty word. After the Depression, serious conflicts developed around the world.
Hitler rose to power and World War II was imminent.

What resources do you use to research your book?

Winton: I build on my professional background knowledge and
understanding. Beyond that, I’ve used official transcripts, and read many
memoirs and contemporary journalistic analyses to get a sense of the
participants’ lived experience of the drama, and to glean many fine-grained
details about daily life and survival in a devastated, isolated city. And of
course Mother Google is always there for me.

Michelle: I spent months reading books about Australia and aviators in
the 1930s, and I watched technical videos on how to fly old Gypsy Moths, over
and over again. I interrogated everyone I knew who had flown before, and was
lucky enough to come across Prue Mason, a children’s author and pilot with
extensive experience flying old planes. The Gerringong and District Historical
Society’s display on Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was a real inspiration, and I
also visited the National Museum in Canberra, Qantas Heritage Collection at
Sydney Airport, the Bradman Museum in Bowral, Fleet Air Arm Museum at Nowra,
the Temora Aviation Museum and the Queensland Museum as well as small museums
in country towns.

While writing Flying through Clouds, I regularly accessed
online collections of the National Library of Australia, the State Library of
New South Wales, Sydney Living Museums, the Powerhouse Museum, the Dictionary
of Sydney and the Glebe Society, as well as the online collections of many other
Australian museums and libraries.

What is more important to you: historical authenticity or
accuracy?

Winton: I can’t really rank these two, or indeed separate them. My
role models all respect (and don’t mess with) the historical record, as I try
to do myself. On the other hand I follow them in ‘filling in the gaps’ in that
record, so historical characters grow from the stick figures walking across the
pages of the history books, into living, breathing human beings with their own
quirks, contingencies, fears, loves and conflicts. This transformation renders
historical processes truly authentic and arresting.

Michelle: Historical authenticity and accuracy go hand-in-hand. I try
to weave historical detail authentically through the narrative and enrich it through
the characters and dialogue. It’s only after I have immersed myself in the
period and culture that I can start to write and develop the characters. During
the editing process, I check for the accuracy of specific historical details
that I’ve incorporated to ensure I haven’t used creative license.

Which character in your current book is your favourite? Why?

Winton: Katerina, one of my four point-of-view characters, and a
pioneering simultaneous interpreter at the trial. She’s a German war widow and
nationalist, one of the conspirators who tried to assassinate Hitler in the
last year of the war. She arrives in Nuremberg with her small daughter, and is
newly remarried to an Australian airforce officer who works for the British
prosecution. She senses the trial’s potential to clear the way for an
honourable German revival; she pursues this mission with a will, as she serves
the tribunal while grappling with the trauma and loss she herself has suffered
in the war.

Michelle: I love all my characters but my favourite is the main
character, Joe Riley. Joe is a flawed character, an anti-hero, but occasionally
we see some redeeming qualities. Like many teenagers, Joe is strong-willed,
independent and thinks he’s invincible. So that readers don’t just perceive him
as a petulant teenager, I’ve made him more complex. Joe loves his family, even
though he is constantly arguing with them. He is loyal to his friends, is
gentle and kind to young children, and has a keen sense of humour. Sometimes
though, Joe just can’t seem to put a foot right.

Are you a ‘plotter’ or a ‘pantser’? How long does it
generally take you to write a book?

Winton: A plotter for the most part. The time it takes me to write a
book varies enormously. Academic ones proceed quite quickly (12 months is my
personal best!), but creative writing requires more care, reflection and
feedback, and takes much longer.

Michelle: When I start writing a book, I have a general idea of where
I’m going, but I’m a pantser. My first draft is all about developing character
and voice. When I have a good understanding of my characters and the world in
which they live, I become more of a plotter and plot the main turning points of
the story. And there’s no story without conflict. But the conflict has to come
from the interaction of the characters. During the editing process, I evaluate
every scene – What impact will it have? How credible is it? Will it drive the
story forward and develop the characters? It took me nearly four years to write
and edit Flying through Clouds.

Which authors have influenced you?

Winton: Kate Grenville, Frank Moorhouse, and Hilary Mantel are the
stand-outs. Each of them writes powerfully and imaginatively, and exemplifies
the approach to writing about historical events and institutions that I
consciously follow.

What advice would you give an aspiring author?

Winton: First, develop ‘the craft’ of creative writing very
carefully, and never feel shy about enrolling in your umpteenth how-to-write
programme. (As the old Zen saying goes: if you think you’re getting somewhere,
go back to the beginning!) Secondly, join or form a writers’ group whose
members read each other’s pre-circulated drafts meticulously, and discuss them
in detail at its meetings. It needs to be a group committed to constructive
criticism with the aim of seeing its members’ work accepted for publication –
not a mutual admiration society.

Michelle: Keep reading, writing and editing, and get advice from
professional editors when you’re ready. I think there’s some truth to the 40%
rule – when you think you’ve finished, you’ve only done around 40% of what you
need to do to make your manuscript the best it can be.

Tell us about your next book or work in progress.

Winton: While I’m waiting for the Next Big Idea, I’m engaging in
some memoir writing that I want to eventually collect into a book (but definitely
not an autobiography!)

Michelle: I’m currently working on my first full-length play, which,
like the short plays I’ve written, is contemporary and for an adult audience.
My next novel will have historical and contemporary settings, but may be for
adults rather than young adults.

At the end of World War II, the Allies have to decide what
to do with the top Nazi war criminals they’ve captured. Rather than simply
shooting them, they take the riskier option of setting up a four-power
international tribunal to try them, with maximum publicity and all the
requirements of due process met. This bold move triggers a tense and gritty
drama involving thousands of war-damaged individuals shipped into Nuremberg, a
small bombed-out city in occupied Germany. Once there, the prosecutors and judges,
led by prominent British and American lawyers, find themselves isolated from
the outside world, starved of basic resources, and flying blind into a trial of
unprecedented complexity, length and size, while under the gaze of the
international media at every turn.

The novel follows four participants through the preparation
and ten-month conduct of the trial: a young GI with a German-Jewish background
who gets snapped up by the American prosecutors for his interpreting skills;
the former head of German Radio, on trial for his life; a German war widow and
pioneer of simultaneous interpreting, now remarried to a British prosecution
investigator; and one of the two British judges sitting on the tribunal.
Through their eyes and ears, we experience the horrors of Nazi war crimes being
revealed to a world public for the first time, the perilous makeshift of the
trial process, and the moments of high drama when it seems that the whole
edifice is about to collapse. They are participants in this very public
enterprise while struggling to lead meaningful private lives and pursue their
own ambitions amid the devastation of postwar Germany.

In the epilogue, set in the present day, a startling
encounter in the old Nuremberg courtroom gives us a glimpse of the trial’s legacy—for
the international rule of law, and for a new culture of German acknowledgment
of past criminality that reunification has fostered.

It’s not easy being a teenage boy growing up in the tough
neighbourhood of Glebe in the 1930s. It’s even harder when your dream is to
become an aviator, your parents are dead against it, and your girlfriend’s
father is the School Principal. But Joe has even bigger challenges he must face
and obstacles to overcome if he wants to achieve his dream. He has a plan and
won’t let anyone stand in his way.

Winton Higgins and Michelle Morgan areappearing in our Sydney Meet the Author
satellite event on 26 July 2017 at the Gordon Library 799 Pacific Highway, Gordon from 6.00-8.00 pm discussing 'Wings into History: How the Past Inspires Historical Fiction' with Justin Sheedy and Kim Kelly. More information and ticketsare available from the HNSA website.

HNSA 2017 Conference

The HNSA 2017 Melbourne Conference is being held on 8-10
September 2017 at Swinburne University. This celebration of the historical fiction genre will showcase
over 60 speakers discussing inspiration, writing craft, research, publishing
pathways and personal histories in our weekend programme.
Among the many acclaimed historical novelists participating are Kerry
Greenwood, Kate Forsyth, Deborah Challinor, Libby Hathorn, Lucy Treloar, Sophie
Masson, Sulari Gentill, Robert Gott and Arnold Zable. The HNSA’s speakers’ list is
available on the HNSA website.

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